Reuters drops photographer over 'doctored' image

Reuters has dropped a Lebanese freelance photographer after it emerged that he had doctored a picture of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut.

The news agency told Adnan Hajj yesterday that it will no longer use his services after the photograph was revealed as fake by bloggers.

It showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shia Islamic group, Hizbullah, which is now in its fourth week.

Reuters said it "withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke".

The agency said it had "strict standards of accuracy that bar the manipulation of images" so that viewers and readers were not misled.

"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.

"This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him."

Hajj had worked for Reuters as a non-staff freelance, or contributing photographer, from 1993 until 2003 and again since April 2005.

He was among several photographers from the main international news agencies whose images of a dead child being held up by a rescuer in the village of Qana, south Lebanon, after an Israeli air strike on July 30 have been challenged by blogs critical of the mainstream media's coverage of the Middle East conflict.

Reuters and other news organisations reviewed those images from Qana and have all rejected allegations that the photographs were staged.